FamilyLast night I saw “Bowling for Columbine”, an incredible movie by Michael Moore. The title comes from the strange fact that the two teenagers who shot up their high school in Littleton, Colorado three years ago went to their Phys Ed bowling class that morning. The movie attempts to explore the specific issue of why Americans shoot each other at a rate that is unparalleled around the world. I’m not referring to mass killings from civil warfare but the cumulative total of individuals killing other individuals with guns. This is not an anti-gun movie or an anti-gun column. The movie rejects that and most other unproven speculations about this complex problem and suggests an hypothesis that is rather incredible and worthy of reflection.
Moore’s view is that Americans shoot other Americans because we live in a culture of fear. This idea is spelled out in more detail in a book by Barry Glasner called “The Culture of Fear.” Mr. Glasner not only appears in the movie but his book was just recommended by Oprah. The ideas covered in the movie are wide-ranging but are neatly encapsulated by a comparison between two cities, Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. They are directly across the lake from one another. Both have poverty, multi-culturalism, and guns. Lots of guns. In Detroit there are lots of murders. In Windsor, one in the last couple of years. Why such a difference?
Rather than the notion that America simply has a history of violence and killing, it focuses on the notion that the people who settled in this country were oppressed in their countries of origin. Thus we are a country of the persecuted. Instead of being accepting of others who were different, it seems plausible that each group established a certain cultural paranoia that has pervaded our society’s fabric for the few centuries it has existed. We are not really a melting pot but instead are an admixture of ghettos, socioeconomic ghettos, religious ghettos, and ethnic ghettos. Freud once said that the glue that holds a group together is its dislike and distrust of those who do not belong to the group.
This underlying anxiety and distrust of others has become honed to a razor’s edge of hypervigilence by some combination of the media’s focus on negative events and parents’ focus on all that may go wrong in life. Yes that is why I’m writing about this movie in a column devoted to family life. We are unwittingly raising our children in a paranoid-like manner that contributes to the distrust that puts us all at risk in many ways.
A few children are kidnapped. It is headline news for weeks. Parents get scared. Don’t let your children out of sight or you are putting them at risk and if anything happens to them, you are at fault. Except child deaths due to kidnappings are a less likely tragedy than being killed by lightening. Kidnappings have actually decreased in number over the years. But those facts are generally ignored because of the “If it bleeds, it leads.” mentality of our local, and to some extent, national news.
Oh by the way, if the kidnapped child was a minority child from a poor neighborhood, you probably didn’t hear about it.
So we lock up our doors and lock up our children and we warn them about strangers offering them rides or touching their private parts, even though family members commit most kidnappings and sexual abuse acts. On top of that we start from the earliest of ages to worry obsessively if our children will make it in life and focus on school as the litmus test for success. We ignore the fact that there is overwhelming data to indicate it is not. Of course that is referring to “good enough” education, not the harsh reality of the terribly inadequate education that occurs in areas of poverty, which combined with the inadequate medical care for the poor, pretty much dooms them to a perpetual cycle of poverty. Most of us ignore this.
Those of us fortunate enough not to be part of that cycle do not teach our children to think kindly of those who are poor, especially those who are poor and of different ethnicity. But we don’t have to look at the stark contrast of a financially upscale suburb to a poor urban neighborhood to see the seeds of distrust. Within every comfortable community, there is substantial isolation and the identification of families or children with whom you and I don’t associate and with whom we don’t want our children to associate.
Meanwhile, schools are run as very competitive environments. Overwhelmed teachers have less opportunity than ever to build connections to their students. Bored teachers don’t even try. This contributes to an atmosphere of high anxiety, especially in our high schools, and to a pervasive sense of failure on the part of a majority of students and their parents.
In turn, parents have less time than ever to build relationships with their children. Why? Sure some must work long hours to make ends meet but many are driven by unreasonable needs for consumerism and underlying, irrational fears of ending up poor. Add to that our irrational fears about aging at a time when we live much longer than ever (age expectancy has literally doubled over the past 100 years). Again, we live in a society that is unnecessarily pervaded by a sense of fear. And the drug companies are not really doing us a favor by pushing the need for anti-anxiety medications!
So do we really need a daily dose of fires, auto accidents, robberies, and shootings? Especially in a context of steadily decreasing crime rates over the past several years. The point of the movie was that Americans are an unnecessarily frightened bunch of individuals and with our proliferation of guns, we tend to shoot when we feel particularly threatened. Plus we leave a lot of loaded guns around resulting in an inordinate number of accidental deaths, especially involving children.
I would urge that all of you see this movie. And please take your children with you (10 and older). I would also love to see the movie immediately make its way into every social studies class with lots of time for discussion.
Given my belief that there is too much fear pervading our lives, what would I suggest parents do to change some of this?
First, turn off the TV news. If we stop watching, maybe someone will get the brilliant idea that Americans really don’t want such negative news.
Second, stop thinking that you can make the world safe for your children by trying to protect them from every possible danger. You can’t. And it is not nearly as dangerous as you have been led to believe.
Third, pressure schools to change. Get rid of homework for elementary school. Use block programming so older children have fewer classes and more time to actually learn something. Put more emphasis on collaborative learning. Make school more relevant to the real world so children are prepared for life and not just college.
Fourth, find a way to identify your child’s strengths and focus on them as opposed to chronically trying to fix their weaknesses.
Fifth, reconnect to the community, local and extended. Make time for caring about other people and involve your children in doing the same.
Sixth, don’t conclude there is some connection between bowling and violence!
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